Aidan Higgins

Opening with a quote from Richard Brautigan -- "I've been examining half-scraps of my childhood. They are pieces of distant life that have no form or meaning" -- Scenes from a Receding Past constructs the adolescence and early adulthood of Dan Ruttle out of a variety of scenes and reminiscences about his life in Ireland, his time in a Catholic school, his first sexual experiences, and his brother's mental breakdown. The second half of the book centers around his relationship with his future wife Olivia, her past, and her former lovers. Calling to mind Joyce's Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man for Dan Ruttle's love-hate relationship with Ireland and the stylistic innovations employed by Higgins, Scenes from a Receding Past is a masterpiece from one of Ireland's greatest contemporary writers.

71 p. 21 cm

"Langrishe, Go Down traces the fall of the Langrishes - a once wealthy, highly respected Irish family - through the lives of their four daughters, especially the youngest, Imogen, whose love affair with a self-centered German scholar resonates throughout the book. Their relationship, told in erotic and occasionally melancholic prose, comes to represent not only the invasion and decline of this insular family, but the decline of Ireland and Western Europe as a whole in the years preceding World War II."--Jacket.

"This collection includes ten plays, many of which were broadcast in England and Ireland between 1973 and 1990"--P. of cover.

Opening with a child's-eye view, 'Donkey's Years' incorporates local history and topography, evoking with vivid, physical detail the voices of his playmates, the smells, colours and sounds of this peaceful corner of Ireland in the 1930s and '40s.